STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) ­ Emails show Penn State's former president Graham Spanier agreed not to take allegations of sex abuse against
ex­assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky to authorities but worried university officials would be "vulnerable" for failing to report it, a
news organization has reported.

CNN says the emails, first obtained by and reported on by NBC, followed a graduate assistant's 2001 report of seeing Sandusky sexually
assaulting a boy in a team locker room shower.

The emails show athletic director Tim Curley and retired vice president Gary Schultz intended to report the allegation, then reconsidered.
Spanier responded that he was "supportive" of their plan, but he worried they might "become vulnerable for not having reported it."
Sandusky was convicted this month of 45 counts of sexually abusing 10 boys. The scandal led to the ouster of Spanier and revered coach Joe
Paterno and charges against Curley and Schultz, who are accused of perjury for their grand jury testimony and failing to properly report
suspected child abuse. Spanier hasn't been charged.

The CNN report cites an email from Schultz to Curley on Feb. 26, 2001, 16 days after graduate assistant Mike McQueary told veteran coach
Joe Paterno about the shower assault. Schultz suggests bringing the allegation to the attention of Sandusky, Sandusky's charity and the
Department of Welfare, which investigates suspected child abuse, according to the report.

But the next night, Curley sent an email to Spanier, saying that after thinking about it more and talking to Paterno, he was "uncomfortable"
with that plan and wanted to work with Sandusky before contacting authorities, the report said.

If Sandusky is cooperative, Curley's email said, "we would work with him. .... If not, we do not have a choice and will inform the two groups,"
according to the report.

Spanier wrote back and agreed with that approach, calling it "humane and a reasonable way to proceed," according to the report. But he also
worried about the consequences.

"The only downside for us is if message isn't 'heard' and acted upon and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it, but that can
be assessed down the road," the email said, according to CNN.

Schultz and Curley's lawyers on Saturday echoed recent comments by Gov. Tom Corbett about the need for a solid case before charging
Sandusky. Corbett began the investigation in 2009 when he was attorney general.

"For Curley, Schultz, Spanier and Paterno, the responsible and 'humane' thing to do was, like Governor Corbett, to carefully and responsibly
assess the best way to handle vague, but troubling allegations," the lawyers said. "Faced with tough situations, good people try to do their
best to make the right decisions."

Paterno, ousted by the school's board of trustees for what was called his "failure of leadership" surrounding allegations against Sandusky,
died of lung cancer in January. After Sandusky's arrest, Paterno said through a spokesman that he reported the allegation to the head of his
department and "that was the last time the matter was brought to my attention until this investigation and I assumed that the men I
referred it to handled the matter appropriately."

That Penn State president Graham Spanier, football coach Joe Paterno, athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz were aware of a 1998 police investigation into an accusation of child molestation against then-Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky isn't, in and of itself, the most damning revelation in the scathing report released Thursday by former FBI director Louis Freeh and his investigative team. The police did their work. The state attorney declined to press charges following that investigation. It is understandable if the men presumed Sandusky had been falsely accused.

But combine that fact with what we already knew. In 2001, graduate assistant Mike McQueary told Paterno he saw Sandusky raping a boy in a shower at Penn State's football complex. Paterno, Spanier, Curley and Schultz -- already aware of suspicions that Sandusky was a child molester -- did absolutely nothing. The two most powerful men on Penn State's campus (Spanier and the late Paterno) and two more on the upper end of the totem pole did nothing to help the child involved in 2001, nothing to stop Sandusky.

While it was a reasonable logical leap to conclude the men knew of the 1998 investigation, there wasn't any hard evidence. Now there is. Now they can't hide their guilt. Certainly, they can lie. They can spin. They or their representatives can perform semantic gymnastics to protect their freedom or their reputations or their legacies, but the world knows exactly what they are. They are the power brokers who decided it would be more convenient to allow a child rapist to keep operating than to deal with the fallout from his arrest.

"Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State," Freeh wrote in his summary of his report. "The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized. Messrs. Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley never demonstrated, through actions or words, any concern for the safety and well-being of Sandusky's victims until after Sandusky's arrest."

Sandusky was clearly deranged, because only a deranged person would sexually abuse a child. These four men have no such excuse. They sought to protect themselves at the expense of innocent children. They may have done good in their lives before and after, but that will always be their legacy.

Anyone who has spent any time inside a major football program or university knows there are few kept secrets. Common sense dictated Penn State's leaders knew in 1998 and that Sandusky's 1999 retirement was no coincidence, but absent evidence to support that, the men still could enjoy some benefit of the doubt. They can't anymore.

Paterno is dead, so he won't have to watch as the tremendous legacy he built collapses under the weight of this one colossal human failing. Any defenders he has left are either blind, fools or family. Most of the nation realized his grand jury testimony provided enough evidence to conclude he enabled Sandusky, but the evidence contained in the Freeh Report should eliminate any doubt.

Curley and Schultz stand accused of perjury for lying to the grand jury last year. They'll get their day in court, and unless they have O.J.-level defense attorneys, they'll be convicted and imprisoned. Hopefully, they'll never work again. They deserve much, much worse.

Spanier has not been accused of any crime. That could change. He still may face a perjury charge. The man who fought hard to make Penn State's e-mails secret so he could avoid accountability is now going to court to seek access to his old e-mails to find out what other paper trails he might have left behind. The image-obsessed Spanier now will be remembered as the leader who presided over one of the most despicable cover-ups in the history of American higher education. Hopefully, he'll also go to jail.

How big of a scumbag is Spanier? When the men decided in 2001 that they wouldn't report Sandusky to any law enforcement agency, Spanier praised Curley's bravery in an e-mail sent at 10:18 p.m. on Feb. 27, 2001:

"Tim: This approach is reasonable to me. It requires you to go a step further and means your conversation [with Sandusky] will be all the more difficult, but I admire your willingness to do that and I am supportive. The only downside for us is that if the message isn't heard and acted upon, then we become vulnerable for not having reported it. But that can be assessed down the road."

Here we are, down the road.

The real downside, as anyone with a soul knows, is that more children were abused. That is the ultimate tragedy, but Spanier, Paterno, Curley and Schultz weren't worried about children. They were worried about themselves.

Penn State's reputation is in tatters. The school will face significant civil action from Sandusky's victims. The federal government plans to investigate. So does the NCAA. My opinion on the latter has not changed after the Freeh Report. Unless the NCAA finds evidence of broken bylaws, it needs to keep its nose out of an issue beyond its purview. Absolute power corrupted absolutely here, but not specifically because this happened in the football building. Powerful people attempt to protect their power in any large institution. Punishing the current crop of 20-year-olds playing at Penn State won't change that.

Besides, the federal government holds a much larger hammer than the NCAA. There are obvious violations of the Clery Act outlined in the Freeh Report, and penalties for those violations could include fines or a loss of federal funding. Penn State can afford to pay fines -- along with the massive settlements it will ultimately pay the victims -- but it cannot bear a cut in federal funding or the elimination of federal aid to its students. The government has yet to use that penalty in a Clery Act case. It seems unlikely it would use it here because doing so would affect thousands of students, put thousands out of work and economically cripple the surrounding region. Still, people need to understand there are far greater issues at play than how many scholarships Penn State's football program has going forward.

The Freeh Report is probably only another mile-marker in a disgusting journey of self-discovery for Penn State. The trials of Curley and Schultz and a planned federal investigation may reveal even more ugly truths about the cover-up. But the Freeh Report provided the evidence that reinforced what most suspected when the Sandusky news broke last November.

Because I did not want to start a new thread I will repost my comments in the Sandusky trial thread from this morning here

The report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh on the Sandusky scandal is out

The most senior officials at Penn State University failed for more than a decade to take any steps to protect the children victimized by Jerry Sandusky, the longtime lieutenant to head football coach Joe Paterno, according to an independent investigation of the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the university last fall.

“Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims,” said Louis J. Freeh, the former federal judge and director of the F.B.I. who oversaw the investigation. “The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized.” ...

One new and central finding of the Freeh investigation is that Paterno knew as far back as 1998 that there were concerns Sandusky might be behaving inappropriately with children. It was then that the campus police investigated a claim by a mother that her son had been molested by Sandusky in a shower at Penn State.

Paterno, through his family, insisted after Sandusky’s arrest that he never knew anything about the 1998 case. But Freeh’s report asserts that Paterno not only knew of the investigation, but followed it closely. Local prosecutors ultimately decided not to charge Sandusky, and Paterno did nothing.

Paterno failed to take any action, the investigation found, “even though Sandusky had been a key member of his coaching staff for almost 30 years and had an office just steps away from Mr. Paterno’s.”

Joe Pa's knowledge of these crimes in 1998 makes sense - Sandusky suddenly "retired" as defensive coordinator in 1999 and withdrew his name from consideration as HC at Virginia after having been told by Paterno he would never be the HC at Penn State.

I can now see Penn State getting clobbered for this by the NCAA since the motive to cover this up apparently included the Penn State HC's interest in shielding his program. That falls under lack of institutional control over the program.

This is the initial response to the Freeh report by the NCAA

NCAA statement on Penn State
Statement by Bob Williams, Vice President of Communications

“Like everyone else, we are reviewing the final report for the first time today. As President Emmert wrote in his November 17th letter to Penn State President Rodney Erickson and reiterated this week, the university has four key questions, concerning compliance with institutional control and ethics policies, to which it now needs to respond. Penn State’s response to the letter will inform our next steps, including whether or not to take further action. We expect Penn State’s continued cooperation in our examination of these issues.”

Freeh's report also implies that Paterno perjured himself while testifying before the Sandusky grand jury. In his testimony, Paterno claimed to only know about the 2001 shower incident purportedly witnessed by graduate assistant Mike McQueary. Freeh's report says that Paterno also knew about the 1998 investigation.

You're a little late to the party, aren't you? Of course they knew. I thought that was evident from the git-go of the entire scandal. Or maybe it was just evident to me since I live in Penn State country and know how much stuff gets covered up/swept under the rug in that cow pasture.

You're a little late to the party, aren't you? Of course they knew. I thought that was evident from the git-go of the entire scandal. Or maybe it was just evident to me since I live in Penn State country and know how much stuff gets covered up/swept under the rug in that cow pasture.

While I had my suspicions I had difficulty getting my mind around the numbing detail of a cover-up starting in at least 1998 of pedophilia that involved not just the head coach and the AD but the university president while the trustees slumbered on while enjoying football Saturdays at Beaver Stadium. I live in SEC country and know how sleazy big time college football can be but this is a Black Swan of a college football scandal

Of course it is a different world in Happy Valley - while the grand jury investigation was rocking along, the sainted JoePa negotiated a new contract in 2011 before his prior contract expired with all sorts of goodies
Paterno Won Sweeter Deal Even as Scandal Played Outhttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/sp...r=1&ref=sports

And Penn State's general counsel Cynthia Baldwin showed up at the grand jury testimony of Schulz and Curley (I was unaware that attorneys get to join their clients in the grand jury room in Pennsylvania - federal system does not work that way) and both witnesses said the general counsel was their attorney
Penn State's general counsel cited for missteps

Legal experts, though, question Ms. Baldwin's attendance, saying that as a representative of the university, she had no business at the grand jury, since Penn State, at the time, was not a party to the criminal investigation.

"The most significant matter in terms of ethics is what happened in the grand jury room," Mr. Ledewitz said. "The first thing you learn in legal ethics is to know who the client is."

If Ms. Baldwin's intent was to attend as a representative of the university, Mr. Ledewitz said, it was her obligation to correct both Mr. Schultz and Mr. Curley when they said she represented them....

Bruce Antkowiak, a former federal prosecutor who now is a law professor at St. Vincent College, said it surprised a lot of lawyers in the criminal defense bar when they learned Ms. Baldwin attended the grand jury.

Occasionally the general counsel for a company or institution will represent a CEO at a grand jury, he said. But if other officials are summoned for testimony, additional attorneys are secured to represent their individual interests.

"In one sense, I'm wondering why the attorney general's office at that time did not raise that question: Who do you represent?" Mr. Antkowiak said.

While I had my suspicions I had difficulty getting my mind around the numbing detail of a cover-up starting in at least 1998 of pedophilia that involved not just the head coach and the AD but the university president while the trustees slumbered on while enjoying football Saturdays at Beaver Stadium. I live in SEC country and know how sleazy big time college football can be but this is a Black Swan of a college football scandal.

I don't think we've heard the end of all this. Maybe so, but I don't think so because this thing is HUGE! Mark my words - Governor Tom Corbett not only knew about all of this, but he also participated in the cover-up during his stint as Attorney General. Depends on whether or not they are covering up for Corbett now.